


Through the Clover to the Creek

by Muccamukk



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Cabin Fic, Fluff and Angst, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Making Out, Non-Graphic Smut, Post-War, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 00:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21234773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Back in the Pennsylvania, Lew keeps trying to find the man he knew at war in this peacetime Dick Winters.





	Through the Clover to the Creek

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Picture Prompt Fun [picture #132](https://picture-prompt-fun.dreamwidth.org/112039.html).
> 
> Thank you to ThrillingDetectiveTales for beta reading and saying really nice things.
> 
> Title from "Sleeper" by Greg Brown.

Dick's final letter from Europe had said, "I should be getting in around All Saint's Day. I need to go straight to PA to see my family. I'll call you when I can, after that. It sure is lonely here without you."

He'd called the second week of November, voice cracking and distant, call short because of the inter-state charges. "It's good to hear your voice," he'd said, and, "Listen, why don't you come down this weekend? We'll go hunting."

"Hunting?"

Dick had laughed. "Yeah. Dress warm."

Lew'd fretted the whole drive down from Nixon to Lancaster. It'd been months gone by and a continent away that they'd said to come back to each other. Dick had been so sweet, so sincere as he'd laid down promise after promise, but he couldn't have meant all of them, not in the face of what it'd be like when he got home.

But there he was, now, walking out of his family house as Lew pulled up in front of it. It was one of those clear, cold days you got in December sometimes, and the sun caught his hair and made it glow like an ember. Lew's heart stuck in his throat.

Dick had a rifle over his shoulder. He was dressed in a plain suit and a battered cap, but he had a gun, and Lew's perception shifted, overlaying the image of Dick at Toccoa, Dick in Uppottery before the big jump, Dick in Holland in the rain, Dick in Bastogne walking the line. It wasn't right. Lew blinked, and the rifle blurred from an M1 to an old hunting thing left over from the last war. Dick opened the back door of the sedan and tossed his suitcase in, then laid the rifle more carefully across the back seat.

"Lew," he said, like that carried a whole conversation.

"Good afternoon," Lew answered, feeling stupid. He didn't know what he was doing here. "Do you want me to come in?"

"I want to get out of here." Dick slammed the back door shut, and climbed into the seat next to Lew. "I need to get out of here."

Lew nodded and put the car into gear. "Where to?"

Dick pointed back the way Lew'd come. "Left there, then north. We're going up to the mountains. My uncle has a cabin there."

As he glanced over his shoulder to turn, Lew caught a woman's face watching the car leave from an upstairs window. She looked drawn, her skin pale and her mouth tight with concern. Dick's mother? "We're not really going hunting, are we?" Lew asked.

"No," Dick said, but didn't elaborate. Lew looked at him sideways. He was wan and tense as the woman in the window, worrying away at the brim of his cap, not looking at Lew. His hair had grown longer than Lew had ever seen it, covering the tips of his ears and starting to curl.

"You all right?" Lew asked.

"Need to breathe," Dick answered. He kept his eyes on the road ahead, so Lew did too.

It was easy to find the way out of town with Dick pointing out the turns, and from there it was a winding road up to the mountains. They really were blue in the distance. Lew turned on the radio to fill the silence, and the familiar sounds of Glenn Miller made Dick relax and slump against the window.

There were so many things Lew wanted to say, but they all bottled up in his throat until he could hardly swallow, let alone speak, so he just drove. The acrid smell of a well-oiled gun filled the car, pulling at Lew's mind, drawing him back to years of sleeping next to a rifle he never fired. He rolled the window down a quarter of an inch, but it was too cold to stand it. Dick looked sideways at Lew when he closed it again, but still said nothing.

The road and the radio reception both thinned as they got into the mountains and their route turned into a winding dirt track. Dick had directions written on a torn bit of paper, and pointed Lew unerringly until they wound high into the hills. They'd be in trouble if it snowed, even with the chains Lew kept in the trunk.

A deer started across the path, leaping like a creature made of oil, and Lew thought of the rifle in the back seat.

Finally, they turned down a drive and followed alongside a little river until it ended in a patch of trampled weeds. The promised cabin sat next to the creek, half on stilts to protect against flooding. The pond downstream would probably be inviting in the summer, but now the black water made Lew shiver and think of the Moder. The sun was just setting, and the naked maples cut across the pink and indigo sky like tracery in stained glass.

Lew shut the engine off and got out. A bird called in the distance, and the creek babbled to itself. Silence filled the woods.

He started when Dick slammed the side door, falling into a protective crouch he hadn't needed even in wartime. Dick had the rifle again, and was walking down the hill towards the cabin. Lew didn't know what to do with the double vision of it all, and closed his eyes to blot it out. Then he took a breath and grabbed his own bag out of the car and followed Dick inside.

"You don't have to stay the whole weekend," Dick said, in a tone that said he thought Lew was just humouring him, had been humouring him all the way from New Jersey.

Lew dropped his suitcase inside the door and said, "Don't worry, the second I think I hear a bear in those woods, I'm gone so fast you won't even see me."

Dick turned from fussing with the wick on the oil lamp and gave Lew a half smile. "Lew," he said, the fondness in his tone driving out whatever admonishment he was trying for.

"I'm sure it's very dangerous out there," Lew said, pressing his case. He kicked the door shut, belying his words by not bothering to throw the bolt, and crossed to where Dick was standing. The cabin was a one-room affair with no toilet or running water, just a couple of bunks and a wood stove. It was a long way from what the Nixons thought of as a "hunting cabin," if the Nixons thought of going hunting at all.

"What, you want me to protect you?" Dick asked. He held out his hand, and Lew took it in his before he realised that Dick probably wanted his lighter for the lamp. Too late. They didn't need lamplight anyway. Enough twilight came in through the windows for them to see the shapes of each other's faces.

"You're the one with the DSC. I've heard you're very brave," Lew told him, snuggling up into Dick's space. Dick held the lamp out of the way to one side, groping for a table to set it on. Their hands were trapped between them, pressed palm to palm, backs turned to their hearts.

"Never had much luck with hunting," Dick said. He'd already stowed the rifle away, and Lew knew it'd stay in the cabinet the entire time. The gun was the excuse: taking a buddy hunting in the Blue Ridge Mountains, needing to get away from town for a little bit, the layers of needing a purpose that men seemed to wrap around every activity.

A reason to see a lover Lew hadn't kissed in months.

The silence of the drive up had Lew vibrating with tension, with possibility, hardly able to speak, the wanting knotted him up so badly.

Now, it was worse than the first time—when they'd just fallen all over each other, and Lew had ended up shoving Dick against the wall and fucking him right there, only half a dozen words spoken between them. Now it felt like the dam hadn't yet burst, that something was holding them back, and neither of them had the words to describe what that was.

Lew needed a drink, but he'd worked his way up to going dry this weekend, for no other reason than that he wanted to see the look in Dick's eyes when he worked that out. This would be so much easier with the haze of alcohol buffering all of Lew's choices. They'd fought a whole war together, why did Lew need things to be easy?

He had Dick in his arms. Surely that should be enough.

The brass base of the lamp chunked against wood as Dick finally managed to set it down. He folded his arm around Lew, burying his fingers in Lew's hair. That was longer now, too. They were both trying to grow the army out of them.

They stood that way for a long time, folded against each other in the dim interior of the cabin. Lew could hear Dick's heartbeat study and true, and the sound made his throat tighten.

"Come on, Nix," Dick finally said. "Need to get that fire lit. It gets cold up here."

"All right," Lew said, but didn't let go of Dick's hand until Dick stepped away.

Lew got his lighter out and lit the lamp, then handed it to Dick. There was a fire already laid in the stove, and it flared to life in seconds. "We'll have to build that before we go," Dick said. "For the next person."

"You come up here much?" Lew asked. He'd known Dick was familiar with hunting, with backwoods life and sleeping rough even before the army. Not in the way that someone like Shifty Powers was, where meat caught was the only meat eaten, but halfway to how the Nixons saw backwoods activities: a luxury of time and habit.

"When I was a boy," Dick said. He still had the stove hatch open and was watching the gathering flames. They reflected warmth off his face, making the new lines softer. For a moment, Lew could see him as a kid tagging after his uncle, learning the ways of men and guns in the woods. Then he shut the door, latching it up tight, and he was this new man that Lew hardly seemed to know again.

"You hungry?" Lew asked, and Dick shook his head. "You want to just go to bed?"

Dick shook his head again. He looked up at Lew appealingly, the plea clear in his eyes, though Lew couldn't tell what it was for. What he could see was that the need to breathe was just as strong up here in the mountains as it had been in Lancaster.

It was the same need that was building inside Lew. Not lust, or hunger, but a void in his chest, something no amount of drinking or running could seem to fill.

Lew dropped to his knees behind Dick, and instead of kissing him, wrapped him in his arms and buried his face in his neck. Dick smelled strange, unlike the army, unlike battered ODs, and sweat, and Barbasol shaving cream, and steel and gun oil. Lew inhaled more deeply, searching for that clean scent, that Dick had had after climbing out of the lake in Austria, or even familiar soap, but it was gone. He smelled faintly of starched cotton and something floral, and even more faintly of a kind of spicy aftershave Lew didn't recognise. Back two weeks, and Dick had scrubbed the US Army off his skin. He was a new man, now.

Dick was stroking Lew's hair like he needed to be calmed, and Lew realised that might be because he'd knotted Dick's shirt into his hands and was holding on like he was drowning. The cabin was starting to warm around them, smelling of burning wood and heating iron. The fire crackled as it ate into new wood, and Lew knew it was just the two of them in all the wide, wild mountains.

Only, they didn't know how to be with each other now that the army wasn't trying to rip them apart.

Lew drew back and studied Dick's face. The kerosene cast a harsher glow than the fire, and those new lines were back again. Lew could still see the tension in his neck, and how even in this place Dick couldn't find it in himself to let go, even a little bit. It would take years, Lew thought, years, and a whole new kind of care. Lew wondered if he had that in him, or if he would fall short in both love and constancy.

"Lew," Dick said, and again it felt as though his name were standing in for a soliloquy of emotion.

"I know," Lew said, which wasn't true in the details, but had to be in general. They'd always known each other, right from the moment they'd met. Now, it was just a matter of finding each other again.

Lew unwrapped himself from Dick, and took his chin between his thumb and finger, tilting his head so that the light caught it differently. Dick was still perfectly smooth shaven, and as he smiled indulgently at Lew, the worry lines settled out until he looked more like the young man Lew had first known, not the war-worn soldier.

"See anything you like?" Dick asked, and his voice hadn't changed either, nor the warm tone he reserved just for quiet moments with Lew.

"Something," Lew said. He balanced his palms on Dick's shoulders and leaned in to kiss him.

Dick's lips were soft, not chapped by the wind or cold, and they parted under Lew's, giving him a moment to taste before Dick tightened his hand in Lew's hair and pulled their faces together. Lew opened his mouth and let Dick move against him hungrily, his tongue sweeping past Lew's teeth into his mouth. Lew groaned, and Dick swallowed the sound and pulled him tighter to him. He was pulling Lew's shirt out of his pants, his cool hand finding its way between layers of clothing to lie flat across the small of Lew's back, like he always did.

If they'd been snatching a moment, Dick would've pushed Lew down to the floor and sucked him off, his hands digging into Lew's hips as Lew struggled not to buck against his mouth or cry out. Or he'd have let Lew push him against a wall or bend him over a table and fuck him quick and deep, while he came all over Lew's hand.

Now, they had the whole weekend ahead of them, and Lew didn't want this to be the kind of rushed affair the war had forced them into. He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against Dick's. "I want to take this slow," he said.

"No, I—" The protest caught on Dick's lips, and for a moment he stopped breathing, or so it seemed, and then he looked at Lew and smiled. Not just the little private smile meant only for Lew to see, or the goofy, lop-sided half-grin he had sometimes when he was laughing at himself as much as anything, but a real, happy grin that took up his whole face. "Yeah," he said, "Yeah. Let's take our time. Why not?"

Dick shook free of Lew's hold and got up. A few seconds, and he'd dragged one of the mattresses off the bunks and put it next to the fire. Lew helped him spread a blanket over it. They didn't bother to make it army neat before they crawled onto it. Dick kicked his shoes towards the door, and Lew did the same, watching them fall any way they liked. They'd trip on them later, and curse, but Lew didn't care.

He reached over and ruffled Dick's hair so it stood on end, transforming from neatly combed waves into a mess of short curls, then laughed at how silly Dick looked. Dick laughed and flopped over, pinning Lew to the mattress, on hand on each shoulder, their hips grinding together. They were both hard, but it didn't really matter, not just then. Dick pulled another blanket over top of them, even though they both still had their jackets on.

What mattered was that they were lying together in the lamplight, with a warm fire cracking in the stove beside them, and they had all the time in the world.

Lew leaned up and kissed Dick again, distracting him as he pulled his tie free and started unbuttoning his shirt. He wanted to touch all of him, to explore his naked body, by touch, by taste, by scent, until they knew each other again.

Dick couldn't seem to stop running his hands through Lew's hair as he kissed him, strands sliding between his fingers. His nails scraped lightly over Lew's scalp, and Lew felt like purring. He smiled against Dick's mouth, and tugged another button loose.

The next button popped off all together and skittered out from under the blanket and across the floor. Dick started to protest, so Lew ripped the whole bottom row off. He'd sew them on for Dick later. Now, he had Dick with his tie off and his shirt open, and he could run his hands up and down his chest all he liked. Despite his warning to dress warm, Dick hadn't worn an undershirt.

Their lips hadn't parted for a second since they'd started kissing again. Dick was focusing on that, on varying the pace and depth of the kisses, so that he could figure out what felt best. Lew liked the slow play of lips against lips more than wide sloppy kisses or nipping teeth, and he expressed that with little humming noises of approval and running his hands over the lean muscles of Dick's back. Dick was still fighting trim, while Lew's middle was already softening and thickening.

There were things he'd learned about Dick's body in all that frantic groping in the dark, like how he didn't really care about getting his nipples played with, but if Lew ran his knuckles down Dick's spine he'd get a sob of pleasure, how he was just a little ticklish down his ribs, but would hold his breath to keep from showing it, how he liked his ass grabbed hard.

Lew mostly kept it above the belt. they were rubbing off against each other's thighs, but lazily, the slow pleasure of friction building between them like a static charge.

His jaw was starting to ache, and he didn't know if it was from smiling or kissing, but Lew didn't care. He wouldn't stop either way.

Lew started to undo his own shirt, wanting to feel their chests together. Dick was rolling more on top of him, still stroking his hair obsessively, and Lew had to work his hands between their bodies to get his buttons undone. Next time, he was going to get undressed first.

If it warmed up the next day, Lew wanted to do this naked in the sunlight, so that he could watch Dick's face as he touched him. For now, he stayed under the blanket, enjoying how warm and comfortable they were together.

They had a whole wealth of next times in front of them.

Dick was lying almost completely on top of Lew now, making it hard to breathe, or maybe that was the way Dick was kissing the corner of Lew's mouth, the edge of his jaw, the lobe of his ear. Lew tipped his head back, and Dick kissed his pulse point, lips lingering there, and then the soft hollow where his throat met his collarbone. He'd have to move if he wanted to keep kissing down Lew's body, but he didn't seem to want to. He sucked lightly at Lew's clavicle, and Lew lifted his head to kiss Dick's hair. It was so smooth and clean now, softer than it had been when they'd served, and sweet-smelling. Lew buried his nose in it and inhaled. Under whatever soap Dick now used, Lew could smell the musky edge of perspiration, and that reminded him of other times they'd done this.

"You smell different," Lew said.

He felt Dick's teeth against his throat as Dick grinned. "Clean?" he asked.

Lew didn't want to get into the gradation between army clean and peacetime clean, so he shrugged one shoulder—shifting both their bodies—and said, "Just different. I like it."

"Good." Dick went back to kissing Lew, his tongue rasping against Lew's stubble like a cat's. He kept parting his lips and flicking his tongue out to touch Lew's neck in the middle of a kiss, not quite sucking, careful not to mark Lew above the collar.

"You can—" Lew started to say, but hesitated. They still needed to stay quiet. It wasn't like Lew had married that English girl, and could wander around looking like a bridegroom the morning after his wedding night. _Fuck that,_ Lew thought. He'd explain it somehow. "You can mark me, if you want."

Dick's breath caught, and his hands went still in Lew's hair. The lamplight cast half his face in shadow, but Lew could still see his lips part in astonishment. Dick hovered over Lew for a moment, and Lew half expected to be fallen upon and savaged—for Dick to become a thing of teeth and sucking pressure, marking Lew's neck and whole body until he was clearly possessed. Instead, Dick's face softened into a tender half smile, and he bumped Lew's nose with his own, before kissing his lips again.

When he was done, he nipped Lew's earlobe lightly, and whispered, "I don't need to, Nix."

Lew had been running his hands up and down and up and down Dick's back under his shirt. He stopped, and pulled Dick's body hard against his, squeezing the breath out of them both. He pressed his face to the side of Dick's neck, kissing his throat but mostly just touching him skin to skin, learning his body and scent. Lew never had gotten his shirt open, but he could feel Dick's heart pounding even so.

He was going to have to breathe eventually, but Lew had stopped caring about that.

Dick rolled off of him and onto his side beside Lew. He propped his head up on one hand and looked down at Lew's face, expression focused, like it was the only glance at an ordinance map he was going to get. Or like he too was determined to learn Lew all over again.

Lew reached up and stroked a line down the centre of Dick's chest. He felt Dick's heartbeat under his fingers, and the wiry hairs sliding with his hand, then against it as he ran his knuckles back up. Dick wasn't wearing his dog tags. They'd used to jingle and slide and smack into things as they'd fucked, a constant reminder of who Dick belonged to, and now he wasn't wearing them. Neither of them were.

"I don't need to mark you," Dick said again, explaining even though Lew had immediately understood, "because we already know, and that's what matters." He started to undo the last few buttons on Lew's shirt, fingers far more careful than Lew's had been. When his shirt was open, Dick pushed Lew's undershirt up to his throat and raked his nails lightly down Lew's chest. It wasn't hard enough to scratch, but Lew's pale skin had always taken up every bump and bruise, and now he showed the faintest pink lines, like contrails following Dick's touch.

Lew closed Dick's hands in his, stilling them just where his ribs started. They made the shape of a heart, with Dick's wrists together, and Lew's fingers circling Dick's. "I might need you to remind me sometimes," Lew admitted.

"All right," Dick agreed, and for a second he looked solemn but pleased with himself, as though he'd just sworn an oath or gotten another damn medal. He drew Lew's hands up to his face and kissed the knuckles of first one than the other, before looking at Lew, again, those blue-grey eyes and curling red lashes the only visible part of his face. "I'll make sure to let you know."

If he could have found the words to tell Dick how much that meant, and that Lew would do his best to do the same, even if his best was a sad and tarnished thing most days, Lew would have poured out a sonnet, but he'd never been good with that kind of talk when he meant it. Instead, Lew reached behind his head to pull his jacket, shirt and undershirt off in one go.

"You'll get cold," Dick warned.

Lew shook his head. "No I won't. You'll keep me warm."

He took Dick's face in his hands and leaned in to kiss him.

"Of course I will," Dick promised, his lips a hair's breadth from Lew's. They were the same words as he'd used when Lew had asked if Dick would still want him once the war was over.

"Will it always be like this, Dick?" Lew asked. The stove was almost too hot against his back, and he leaned away from it and into the warmth of Dick's bare chest.

Dick hesitated, and Lew could see the possibility of a lie flicker over his face. It'd been a childish question, anyway. No life was just the best moments, and even Lew knew that. He opened his mouth to take it back, or laugh it off somehow, but Dick moved first.

Dick wrapped his arms around Lew's neck and pulled them together until their bodies lay flush, chest to chest and heart to heart. "No," he said, "But we'll always find our way back to this."

"Of course we will," Lew agreed, and kissed Dick again.


End file.
